Mobile devices provide the benefit of being portable while allowing a user to perform a variety of functions including various forms of communication and computing. For example, some mobile devices are capable of accessing the Internet, executing gaming applications, playing videos and music, as well as providing functionality of a traditional mobile, e.g. cellular, phone. As mobile devices are not tethered to a physical communication medium or stationary power source, such devices are generally powered by a rechargeable battery. A persistent challenge in mobile device design is increasing the length of time the device may operate without recharging the battery.
One consequence of exhausting a mobile device battery is loss of communications. For example, mobile telephone users whose phone battery is depleted become unreachable by phone and, e.g., text message via a Short Message Service (SMS). One way in which accessibility has been increased is by employing forwarding services by which calls to one telephone number are automatically forwarded to one or more other phone numbers associated with other phone devices. The forwarding phone number may be tied to a user's device, e.g. a user's mobile phone, or the phone number may only serve as a starting point for the forwarding service. The forwarding phone number may be associated with multiple mobile devices owned by the same user. In any case, the user employs multiple phone devices, each of which is identified by a unique telephone number, but the forwarding service makes the user accessible at the multiple numbers via the multiple phones from a single telephone number.
Another technique that has been employed to increase user accessibility via mobile or other communications devices is associating multiple phone numbers with a single device. For example, a user's mobile phone may have a local phone number for people that can call the user from another phone number in the same area code and a toll-free, e.g. 1-800 number for people that call the user from outside of the area code.
Another technique employed for user accessibility includes telephone service providers providing multiple lines associated with one board number. Incoming calls to the one number are routed to one of many devices that can be answered by one of many telephone operators. Outgoing calls from the phone bank may be identified to outside systems by the one board number. Such configurations, however, are implemented in traditional fixed telephone systems versus mobile phone systems, e.g. cellular telephone systems.